APPEAL COURT

Manawatu Standard, Volume LI, Issue 197, 22 July 1931, Page 10

APPEAL COURT

RESERVED JUDGMENT. Per Press Association. WELLINGTON, July 21. In the Appeal Court case General Motors Acceptance Corporation versus Traders Finance Corporation, further particulars of this judgment (delivered on Friday last) became available when the typed judgment was handed out for publication. As previously stated the judgment of the Court dismissing the appeal with costs was delivered by Sir Michael Myers, the Chief Justice. His Honour, after holding that the agreements entered into by appellant in accordance with its wholesale storage plan and its wholesale demonstration plan did not come within Section •57 of the Chattels Transfer Act, and were not customary agreements .so as to be entitled to the benefit- of that Section, proceeded as follows: ‘•'On consideration of all the circumstances we cannot but come to the conclusion that in their real and true nature and substance the transactions entered into by appellant are loan transactions and that the agreements which it obtains from distributors or dealers on either the wholesale storage plan or on the wholesale demonstration plan and from the ultimate purchases or users on the rental plan are in substance instruments by way of security for —adopting the language of appellant’s own representations contained in the documents from which we have quoted—the amount of finance or credit supplied by appellant. In other words, we think that the real transaction under the first two plans is a sale by General Motors (N.Z.) Ltd. to the distributor or dealer, and a loan by appellant to the distributor or dealer of the portion of the purchase money which is paid by appe’lant to General Motors (N.Z.) Ltd. And in the case of the retail plan the true transaction is the sale of a car by the dealer to the user, the appellant advancing the unpaid portion of the purchase money upon security of j an agreement and the car comprised : therein. “If this is correct, then the appel-j

lant is a dealer in finance or credit, and cannot, we think, be regarded as a person engaged in the trade or business of selling or disposing of motor cars, within the meaning of Section 57. This being so. apart from our conclusions that the agreements entered into under the wholesale storage plan and the wholesale demonstration plan are not customary agreements, none of the agreements under any of the appellants plans comes witlrin Section 57 of the Chattels Transfer Act. Consequently they require registration. and as they are not registered, Section 19 of the Act applies. As it is admitted that unless agreements come within Section 57 the appellant can not succeed.-, it is unnecessary to consider either the, grounds upon which the learned .Judge in the Court below relied or any of the other questions argued before this Court.”